


When I Say Let's Keep In Touch

by Nimravidae



Series: Build your Own World [2]
Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, One-Shot, Pre-FHIR, Relationship Woes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-25 19:05:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7544332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nimravidae/pseuds/Nimravidae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They weren't perfect, but that's okay. They didn't have to be.</p>
<p>(Ben and Nate fight on a weekend getaway)</p>
            </blockquote>





	When I Say Let's Keep In Touch

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Mix Tape by Brand New
> 
> Takes place a year before Nate's death in For Here Is Rest

For almost a full second, Ben’s thankful for the lightning that lets him see the goddamn candles he’s been blindly groping for. 

He’s far less thankful when it goes dark again and he’s pretty sure that box of matches he  _ just  _ saw grew legs and sprinted the fuck away. 

There’s a sigh that presses hard on Ben’s already-fraying nerves from the general direction of the bed, followed by an irate voice asking: “Why don’t you just use your phone as a flashlight?” 

“If I could find that too, I would,” he snaps back, a little more terse than he should be.

So, the long weekend getaway was his idea. Just him and Nate and a cabin high up in the North Carolina mountains. No work, no family, no worries - just the quiet of nature. The website promised close hiking trails and babbling brooks and the early-fall beauty of the Appalachian Mountains.

Not that Ben was planning on seeing too much of that, of course. Maybe a lazy early-afternoon easy hike and a lunch in the small town nearby to offset the high number of hours he’d anticipated being trapped between his absolute favorite body and the bedsheets. 

Nate even agreed it was exactly what they needed after a long,  _ long  _ few months of barely getting a chance to see each other between their own conflicting schedules. Time alone together.

And they got plenty of it, really. Traffic was just enough of a nightmare that they barely slid through security at the airport with enough time to make it to their gate - only to learn they’d been delayed. And then delayed again.

A break in the weather didn’t come for three hours. Three hours of Nate sitting against a wall, idly flipping through some book he picked up in one of the shops. Three hours of silence between the two of them. 

And another six on the plane. Nate dozing against the glass and leaving Ben to squish closer to him to avoid being sweat on by the exceedingly large gentleman sat in the aisle seat beside him and count down minutes until they landed.

It was bumpy, leaving both men looking a little green by the time they managed back to ground. The only saving grace was their rental car - and even then, Nate had missed their turn between the dark and the rain and by the time they noticed Ben was on the phone trying to assure the woman at the front that they’d be there just as soon as they could to check in properly. Just a few minutes, he swore.

Okay, so maybe it was Ben who didn’t check the weather for that weekend. Maybe it was Ben who snuck exams to grade into his carry on that Nate noticed with a scoff of,  _ “of course.”  _ Maybe it was Ben’s fault - but it was Nate who said traffic would be fine.

It was Nate who made them late checking another parent's email. It was Nate who left behind the bag of all their liquids at security (including all their toothpaste, soap, lube and mouthwash).

And it was the raging, rattling storm that made it so they couldn’t exactly do anything about it.

And it was the branches outside the windows that kept crackling and creaking against scratched windows.

And it was the accident on the highway that made them rush.

And it was  _ Nate  _ who was mad at  _ him.  _

For  _ “being such a tight-ass all the time,” _ as Nate had put it. For getting upset that Nate forgot about parents night and ended up cancelling on their monthly date night too late to cancel the reservations. For, it seemed, every little thing Ben tried to do.

Maybe they shouldn’t have done this just four days after a low-voiced disagreement in their living room, maybe they could have stood to have some more cooling-off time - but Ben thought it had been long enough.

And it was the storm that knocked out their power that led to Ben clambering about on the floor of their smaller-than-anticipated cabin.

Nate sighs again and Ben hears the creaking of the bedsprings as he rolls onto his side. He grits his teeth against his own  _ “what do you want  _ me  _ to do about it?”  _ He doesn’t say it. Doesn’t say anything as he closes his fingers around the matchbook and fumbles back to the candles he saw earlier. They were supposed to be romantic.

Mood lighting. 

Now he’s thinking there was a lounge chair nearby - right in front of the dusty, un-cleaned fireplace and next to the kitchenette - maybe he could sleep there. He lights one of the candles, letting it cast little shadows about the room as he brings it to the nightstand. 

Nate’s bundled up in one of the musty throw blankets, curled stiff in on himself. His shoulders are too set, his breathing too sharp. Ben knows he’s only pretending to be asleep. He also knows that Nate took the throw blanket off the exact lounge Ben was thinking about sleeping on and that it would be a pointless fight to wrangle the duvet out from under him.

So instead he uses the candle to find his phone, put the matches in a relatively near-by spot and make sure the door was locked.

Ben doesn’t go straight to bed - instead he watches the storm roll around them until the breathing pattern from the other side of the room evens out to a more sincere and calm rise and fall. He listens to it for a bit, the shadowed ball on the bed curling instinctively tighter each time thunder rattles the frames of the cabin.

There’s a leak in front of the door and Ben puts a chipped mug under it before retreating to a weak, restless sleep.

The morning isn’t any better. Nate’s already awake by the time Ben manages himself to a decent level of wakefulness - sitting fully showered and dressed under the harsh, bare-bulbed light of the kitchenette. There’s a second cup of coffee beside him and the mug catching raindrops has been emptied.

Ben slips into place beside him. Quiet.

He can already feel the desperation leaking through his bones to fix this. To mend the uncomfortable silence around them and go back to their cute, cuddly selves again. They don’t exactly fight often - but when they do, it’s the least pleasant part of Ben’s life.

He hates it, he hates not having him to lean on, he hates not having him curled up in his arms muttering soft little “I love you,”s - he just hates not having Nate there, on equal footing. He hates not being able to laugh with him and just have those soft eyes going hard and that perfect smile dashed from his features.

What he wouldn’t give for just a hint of those dimples.

But instead Nate is scanning a pamphlet of things that are definitely cancelled due to the half-flooded trails and the gross, muddy everything and the threat of yet another battering of rain and lightning.  

“Why don’t you grade those exams?” His voice is hard.

The sigh rises out of Ben before he can think to stop him, the coffee Nate made for him long-cold. “Nate,” he tries to start, wholly unsure of where this is going. 

Thankfully, his boyfriend cuts him off, “I’m serious. I don’t mind, just do your work.” His tone seems to pretty clearly imply that he does mind, but Ben gets up anyway. There were only a class-and-a-half's worth left - and they were all the ones from the same key anyway. Forty-eight questions, plus one short answer.

Nothing too difficult. Ben sets the key out, drinks from the cold coffee without so much as a grimace, and starts grading.

It’s nothing special. It’s an average end-of-unit test - the usual amount of doodles sprinkled in on the packets that Ben always tries to either match in his pen or offer a little smiley face (or the occasional frowny face when it looks a lot like a stick figure about to hurl himself off the ledge of a question about Confederate treatment of southern towns at the beginnings of the war.) There’s a few amazing scores, a few incredibly cringe-y ones. 

But he’s only less than a fifth through the stack when a familiar hand pulls the key a bit away from Ben. He’s about to argue, to say if Nate didn’t  _ mean  _ it, he shouldn’t have  _ said  _ it, but he promptly shuts up when instead of snatching the key away, Nate moves to grab some of the tests from the pile. 

“Same answers?”

“Yeah, all of them.”

They work in silence, and the tension ebbs softly. Slowly. More, when Nate huffs a bit of a laugh at the end of his first test packet. 

Ben had almost forgotten about that question.

He needed a last one, and sometimes if he was running low he just threw in a sort of easy one, when he was writing this one he’d admittedly been distracted by Nate’s kitchen singing. 

“Question forty-eight. Who said ‘My only regret is I have but one life to give for my country.’ Hint: he shares a name with the teacher who hosts the talent show. Cute.” 

Ben risks a glance and there’s the flash of that smile again. A little crooked - a little more warm and a little more affectionate and a little more like the man he loves so fiercely. “I needed another question. You’re always a host of good ideas anyway.”

Abruptly, Nate asks, “Do you remember how we met?”

“Pretty sure I had stress-nightmares about it for a month, hard to forget.”

The smiles gone and Ben realizes a little too late that might have been the wrong response so he tries to backpedal back to what he meant by it, which was, “I just mean. I was such a… I thought I made an ass out of myself. I thought you must have totally hated me.”

Nate’s brow furrows for a moment and Ben rambles on, “You were hitting on that girl next to you. Liberty - pulling that stupid line, give me liberty or give me death?”

“I said it was a Nathan Hale - the dead spy - quote. You said it was Patrick Henry, and then kept talking… and talking… and talking. You were so red I thought you were gonna pass out but damn, if it wasn’t the cutest thing.”

Ben can’t help but smile, feeling his cheeks burn at the lingering embarrassment. He droned on about the historical dude, spouting off theories about the captain really quoting Cato (“The play, not the other spy. But Cato the spy, now  _ he…”)  _ until Liberty moved herself into another row and Nate kept staring at Ben wide-eyed and with some weird… mixed awe and something else.

All he remembers feeling is a raw, painful mortification.

Nate leaves the short answer questions for Ben to grade - only marking them at all when they’re empty - but otherwise makes the process go a lot faster.

Smoother.

He’s forgotten what it was like to work together. The last few months a mangled mess of just missed dates and times and Nate being asleep when Ben came home and Ben being sick - but not sick  _ enough - _ and crotchety and Nate being overbearing.

They’d been growling more than talking.

Huffing more than touching.

If it was killing Nate as much as it’s killing Ben - he knows they have to fix it some time or it’ll all just fall apart.

Ben’s pen slips as he realizes what he’s just thought and damn, he feels sick. Does he look as pale as he feels? Nate hasn’t looked up at him from where he’s scanning through a page of answers and questions.

It’ll fall apart.

Is this what it feels like? Is he losing Nate? He can’t lose Nate - he just can’t. The idea of a day when he’s packing up all of Nate’s stuff, putting them in separate boxes and sending them apart. A day where he can’t come up behind him and wrap his arms around him. A day where Nate is out of his reach because of some stupid fight - it might just kill him. 

“I love you,” he says, too fast and too suddenly and too sharp and it startles Nate.

He jumps when he hears it, clearly having been in some sort of focused zone, almost knocking his own half-finished mug over, “Jesus  _ fuck _ , you scared me. God damn.” A pause. “I love you too.”

Does it sound robotic? Ben goes over the way Nate said it again and again and again. Exasperated, maybe? Frustrated? 

Maybe he’s being too clingy, too over-analytical. Too panicked. Nate wouldn’t have agreed to this trip if he didn’t want to come, Ben knows that much. And since he did agree, it meant he did want to come. Did want to spend time with Ben. Did want to go away with him. Probably still wants to date him.

Probably.

“The rain stopped,” Nate points out, and Ben almost says  _ I noticed,  _ but thought better of it. “I’m gonna go grab some lunch, okay?”

“Sure.”

He grabs the keys from where he left them the night before, and doesn’t give Ben another glance over his shoulder as he leaves. 

The blanket is folded over the back of the lounge chair again. 

The side of the bed Nate had slept in smoothed down compared to the mess Ben left his side.  With the daylight still going and no sign of when the electricity would return or go out again, Ben decides to put the matches and candles somewhere more… accessible. So he isn’t patting around in the dark again. 

He does that, he finishes grading quickly - Nate’s help once again putting him right - and packs it all away into his laptop bag. Nate still isn’t back by the time he’s done that, gotten dressed, and washed out the mugs in the little kitchenette’s sink. 

So he picks up the book his boyfriend was anger-reading in the airport. Some trashy dime-store romance, already dog-eared with scenes Nate probably thought were especially heinous and worthy of showing off once he was less miffed.

He flips through it idly on the little couch, blanket draped over himself, careful to keep Nate’s bookmark in place.

Ben doesn’t know when he dozed off, face against the musty cushion, but he wakes up to a door shutting carefully and the rustling of bags. He closes his eyes again, not sleeping but just lying there as Nate sets things down. 

Footsteps creep closer, a sigh as he leans down to pick up the book now laying on the floor. 

“Hm,” he mumbles, “didn’t think you’d deign yourself to trashy romance.”

It hits Ben that Nate still thinks he’s sleeping. So he stays perfectly, perfectly still - hardly breathing in the sudden realization and the weight under the bitterness that laces Nate’s voice.

“Too smart for them, right Ben? Too smart for fuckin’ everything,” there’s a sigh thick in the air as he starts back away from Ben. But he can still hear him, whisper to himself, “Even me.”

He wants to get up. He wants to get up and throw himself across the room and scoop Nate up into his arms and tell him  _ no _ . No, no, no. He would never - he could never… but, he had, hadn’t he?

Scoffed when Nate missed their date because he wrote down the wrong day. 

Rolled his eyes at the cover of his book.

Assumed Nate wouldn’t be interested in the same bios and non-fiction that Ben was - and why? He never thought Nate was  _ stupid,  _ that much was certain. Hell, they both met their first years at  _ Yale _ , it was Nate who made sure Ben didn’t flunk out of his goddamn statistics class.

He just thought they were… different. Different interests and different thoughts and that was okay. He feels sick, genuinely sick,  realizing maybe he wasn’t clear enough with that for the four years they’d been together.

The mini-fridge opens and then closes - Nate putting away what he got, content to let Ben sleep. 

The bedframe creaks. Nate lying down too.

Four years.

For four years he’d let this thought fester, he had to have. Or maybe it was only after they’d graduated. Or maybe it was only these last few months, but that’s still too long. Ben waits a breath or two. Or three. Or four.

Or fifty.

Then he gets up, joints popping and protesting, and slowly walks over. Nate’s definitely not asleep.

“Knew you were awake,” he huffs, sheets shifting as he curls in on himself more, “I took the throw last night so you wouldn’t sleep on the chair. If you want to tonight, have at it.”

“I don’t,” Ben says, sounding stupidly upset even to his own ears. Nate doesn’t seem to appreciate it - burying his face more into the blankets. “Nate, I’m sorry I’m an asshole.”

There’s an inhale that sounds like it’s about to protest from under the blankets, but Ben steps in front of it, slipping behind him onto the bed. 

“I didn’t mean to… I... “ It all trails off and jumbles together in one big mess that sticks hard in his throat. He slides a hand down Nate’s arm, relief bursting in his chest when he isn’t shrugged off right away. “I love you, okay? And I never want you to think like I don’t think you’re the best thing in my life.”

“I know I am,” the muffled interlude comes.

“I know, it's just, I love you. So much and I don't think you're stupid or anything like that.”

Nate sighs and rolls onto his back, letting Ben prop himself up above him, “You don't act like it. You get pissed when I can meet up to  _ your  _ standards and then brush off everything you think is below you. Which just so happens to be some fun shit sometimes. I want you to loosen up and not have a heart attack when you're thirty because some kid likes some new pop band, y’know?”

A breath. A moment. Then Nate continues. One hand finding the buttons of Ben's shirt, “I know you love me, and I love you too. It's just... “ he swallows, letting the hand drop, “feels like you deserve someone more your level sometimes.”

Ben's heart breaks and he shifts to take Nate's hand, “If anything I don't deserve you. You're kind and sweet and witty, you make friends with everyone around you in an instant and I just… can't interact like you do. I always thought you were just pitying the loser in your freshman History class who wouldn't shut up about spies. I hate to break it to you, but you're stuck with me forever.”

His lips curve just a little, under the pink that always preludes a rush of tears. Nate pulls him down, wrapping his arms around him and pressing his slightly-damp face into the crook of Ben's neck. 

He lands a little too hard, a little too awkwardly, but doesn't complain. Instead he pulls Nate in closer, whispering how much he loves him between small, chaste kisses.    
  


**Author's Note:**

> *confetti blasts*
> 
> SO obviously this means the AmRev happened exactly how it happened with all the people. Nate will be the _only_ one who gets referenced in regards to his 1776 doppelganger btw.


End file.
